The present disclosure relates to computer account servers and, in particular, to controlling access by computer terminals to data structures of computer accounts that are managed by computer account servers.
The volume of digital data that is stored for users on local and cloud-based servers is growing at exponential rates. Moreover, there is a rapid proliferation in the number of accounts that users now own for email, social media, video/picture authoring, video/music/application downloading, etc. For example, some users own (control) multiple work email accounts and multiple personal email accounts. It is important for account service providers to be able to manage such accounts to minimize and ensure effective use of the server storage requirements of these accounts. Some email account service providers are known to purge (delete) user accounts due to inactivity. However, these solutions are risky because the inactivity time period may be unreasonable to some users, and purging a user's account can result in the irretrievable loss of digital data that is highly valuable to more than just the account owner.